Joey Logano believes Josef Newgarden would be competitive on a road course in NASCAR
The new era of motorsports is upon us and that means crossover. Joey Logano believes Josef Newgarden wants to race in NASCAR. Following Kyle Larson’s impressive outing and Rookie of the Year performance at the Indy 500, could Newgarden venture to stock cars next?
Team Penske has more than enough resources to put Josef Newgarden in a car. Joey Logano says that the IndyCar driver has even brought up the topic himself. With drivers like Shane van Gisbergen, Cam Waters, and Will Brown from Supercars, Kyle Larson from NASCAR, Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen from F1 – everybody wants to crossover, try a new flavor of racing.
NASCAR has been the hub for others to attempt another series. F1, IndyCar, WEC – hell, Travis Pastrana was in the 2023 Daytona 500 – it has become a trend of sorts to get in these Next Gen cars and give them a spin. Joey Logano knows firsthand how it can go. SVG’s win at Chicago embarrassed him and other Cup drivers a bit.
Logano was on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio for his weekly appearance of Behind the Wheel. He talked about Newgarden’s interest in NASCAR and how he would potentially perform.
“He’s brought it up before that he wants to. We’ve seen it before, right? The transition is not that easy from a stock car to an IndyCar. They seem like they’re so different. Now, this day and age maybe a little bit closer than ever, especially if you’re on a road course. Where Josef has driven other sportscars that are similar to the Next Gen Cup car now. He would probably jump in on a road course and be pretty competitive right off the bat, in my opinion. An oval, probably would take a little longer to get his head wrapped around.
“It’s no different than what we see with Shane right now,” Joey Logano continued. “Same thing is that his road courses, he’s an animal, and on ovals, he’s figuring it out. He’s getting better every week, I can see that. But it’s going to take a little bit longer. And it’s funny because most fans look at it and say ‘Man road courses must be harder than ovals you gotta make a lot more turns.’ It’s just a completely different discipline, it’s not easier or harder but the amount of time that it takes to get good at an oval takes a while. If you’ve never done it your whole life, right? Like, it takes a minute because it’s such a different discipline.”
I know that Joey Logano knows more about racing than I could ever attempt to know, but I think he’s missing a crucial piece here. Josef Newgarden is dominant on ovals in IndyCar. I understand that they race differently than a stock car on ovals, but he understand how to get around them.
IndyCar only races 17 times during the year. Why not field another car for Josef Newgarden, Will Power, or Scott McLaughlin to run on occasion in the Cup Series?